Simple Home Money Management

by CI Staff

As the name implies, Simple Home Money Management is a financial management software that helps you track your income, expenses and investments and meet your personal financial goals. The setup process is incredibly painless, as the program walks you through everything step by step from the moment you download it.

After installing the program, click on “Set-up” and the program will show you four sections: Accounts, Income items, Outgoing items and Budget – annual. The Accounts section includes credit card, checking, investment, savings and other accounts. Simply drag and drop the icon corresponding to the account you want to set up and create a name that makes sense. Enter the account number, balance, and balance as-of date for each account.

In the Income section, drag and drop each income item that is appropriate. There is no need to specify the amount or recurrence pattern for each income item at this point. Follow the same steps to complete the outgoing items section.

When you are through with the first three sections, make your way to the Budget – annual section. This area allows you to input the frequency, start date, end date and amount for each of the categories you selected earlier. As you enter the appropriate inputs, the program will keep a running total for your income and expenses, as well as your yearly savings. A major strength of the program is that it allows users to be as comprehensive as needed in the budgets section and shows you updated yearly savings estimates, assuming you stick to your planned budget.

As you incur expenses and gain income, you can enter them into the appropriate accounts. The program will then keep track of your actual income and expenses and provide you with an easy way to compare the two.

The Reports and Graphs area of the program keeps you informed about your yearly actual and budgeted income and expenses. The Annual budget section brings up a list of your income and expenses and summarizes the input values you entered. The section called “Year to date against budget table” keeps an updated tab of your actual expenses as you enter them and lists them alongside your budgeted income and expenses. The table’s Actual-Budget column shows the difference between the two.

Graphical representations of your year-to-date actual and budgeted income and expenses are depicted in the Year to date against budget graphs section. The Charts section takes you to pie charts that show each category for your income and expenses relative to its total.

Finally, a comprehensive forecast can be prepared that displays your forecasted income and expenses for each week in the year. Numbers that are shaded in blue represent actual figures from past weeks. The total forecast income, expenses and balance for all your accounts are summed up and presented. This not only provides an accurate depiction of your actual income and expenses that have already occurred throughout the year, but also portrays how your accounts will grow if you stick to your budget.

Overall, Simple Home Money Management provides users with a quick and easy way to track income and expenses and maintain a budget. The software is not meant to be a portfolio tracker, and this product would not be recommended for a user looking to track their investments. Simple Home Money Management comes with a 15-day free trial and costs $29.95 for the full program.

Discussion

Joseph from MA posted over 3 years ago:

This doesn't seem like anything special. mint.com tracks your expenses and income automatically. this simple program requires you to enter your expenses. And simple program wants 30 dollars for this? first impression is - not worth anything. See mint.com.